Thème varié

Charlotte Sohy Thème varié, Op. 15; Guillaume Lekeu Violin Sonata; Camille Saint-Saëns Two Élégies, Opp. 143 and160; Olivier Messiaen Thème et variations; Mel Bonis Three Pieces for violin and piano, Opp. 78, 83, and 84; Elsa Barraine Nocturne (première recording).

Elena Urioste violin; Tom Poster piano

Chandos CHAN 20380
chandos.net

There is a particular pleasure in returning to a recording again and again as a reviewer and finding that it yields something new each time, while one thing remains constant. With this latest Chandos disc from Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, that constant is the sheer beauty of the playing: the balance between soloist and accompanist is judged to perfection, and the engineers have done what Chandos so often manages, capturing the sound with such transparency that the listener seems to be eavesdropping on the duo rather than hearing a recording at all. It is sublime, moving and endlessly captivating.

The programme is a treasure-trove of lesser-known French and Belgian repertoire spanning four decades, from 1892 to 1932, and its unifying thread is a composer who never actually appears on the disc: César Franck. Franck taught and championed both Guillaume Lekeu and Mel Bonis, and Bonis in turn taught Charlotte Sohy, whose own principal teacher, Vincent d'Indy, was one of Franck's most devoted disciples. Rather than include Franck's own violin sonata, Urioste and Poster have chosen the far rarer sonata by his fellow Belgian Lekeu, a work seldom recorded and almost never heard in concert halls, and built the rest of the programme around it.

That sonata, in G major, is the cornerstone of the disc, and Nigel Simeone's excellent liner notes remind us of the poignancy behind it: Lekeu wrote it in 1892, two years before his death from typhoid, at just twenty-four, the day after his birthday. It is a work that captivates from its lyrical opening, and it is clear throughout that the performance is a finely attuned husband-and-wife partnership; the phrasing breathes naturally, and the tautness of the playing is stunning, pulling the listener ever deeper into the piece. The central 'Très lent' is the emotional heart of the performance, with lines from both players enthralling and enchanting in equal measure.

The disc opens with Sohy's Thème varié, dedicated to Nadia Boulanger, Urioste drawing a gorgeous tone from her instrument in a set of variations that builds impressively before subsiding into quiet. Three short pieces by Bonis follow, their rising melodies quite delicious, complementing the duo's earlier recording of her violin sonata on their previous Chandos release. Bonis's attractive Largo leads naturally into Messiaen's Thème et variations, played here with real style, sophistication and intelligence.

Saint-Saëns's two Élégies, unfairly neglected pieces, sit fascinatingly close in time to the Messiaen – separated by little more than a decade, though the two inhabit sound worlds that seem decades, if not generations, apart. The programme closes with Elsa Barraine's haunting Nocturne, a fitting valediction from a composer who was Messiaen's contemporary and lifelong friend.

What could, in lesser hands, have been a worthy exercise in musicological rehabilitation is instead a genuinely absorbing hour of music-making. Urioste and Poster do not merely rescue these pieces from obscurity; they make the case, piece by piece, that they never deserved it in the first place.